Advances in semiconductor manufacturing and circuit design technologies have enabled the development and production of ICs with increasingly higher operational frequencies. In turn, electronic products and systems incorporating such integrated circuits are able to provide much greater functionality than previous generations of products. This additional functionality has generally included the processing of increasingly larger amounts of data at increasingly higher speeds.
Many electronic systems include multiple printed circuit boards (PCBs) upon which these high-speed ICs are mounted, and through which various signals are routed to and from the ICs. In electronic system with at least two PCBs and the need to communicate information between those PCBs, a variety of connector and backplane architectures have been developed to facilitate information flow between the boards. Unfortunately, such connector and backplane architectures introduce a variety of impedance discontinuities into the signal path, resulting in a degradation of signal quality or integrity. Connecting to boards by conventional means, such as signal-carrying mechanical connectors, generally creates discontinuities, requiring expensive electronics to negotiate. Conventional mechanical connectors may also wear out over time, require precise alignment and manufacturing methods, and are susceptible to mechanical jostling.
These characteristics of conventional connectors can lead to degradation of signal integrity and instability of electronic systems needing to transfer data at very high rates, which in turn limits the utility of such products.